


Aftercare

by Lani



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Blood Drinking, Drabble, Gen, Religion talk, just dudes being bros, post-TVA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 18:05:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11765430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lani/pseuds/Lani
Summary: Wallowing in your misery over a failed suicide attempt is difficult when a self-certified life coach's got your number. AKA: The one where Santino and Mael get along for once. Short and sweet.





	Aftercare

The darkness was not oblivion. The darkness dulled the edges but it didn’t take them off. There was a fire in his body, drawing lines along his veins to crack his blackened skin. It was no use to call upon his muscles and bones. They would not obey him. Any move might be too great a strain and break him open like a log in the fire. He held the heat of the sun in his body. His mind, however, was working fine and he wished it weren’t. Mael lay on the cold concrete ground and was thankful for the dampness of the basement and the void before his sightless eyes. His blood rushed in his ears like a river, like a growling animal. There were fear and shame in him that pounded in his angry heart, pulsing like the aftermath of a wound. He didn’t remember how he had gotten here, into this refugium, but for now it seemed the perfect place. He could stay here, undiscovered, and play at decay. Or he could have, had it not been for the powerful blood in his veins, fed by ancient founts, that was working to restore him at once. Already his senses were returning to him. And the sun had barely set. What was a muffled confusion of noise soon became traffic, became clacking heels and murmuring voices. The black receded to yield shadows and shapes, a crate he had toppled in his blind flight from the scorching sun. At once he wished for deafness again, and for darkness.

Instead, he heard heavy steps on the stairs. They were the noises one would make when they knew that someone was there to hear them, a subtle announcement that they were about to dispel a state of solitude. They might as well have cleared their throat. But there was no need. The gentle touch on his mind was enough to rouse Mael’s alarm. Another blood drinker had found him here and was now on his way to him. The ancient vampire forced his head to turn, defiant despite his injuries. He would not receive any vagabond looking like a slain dog. He blinked against the trace of light that fell into the room from the door that was now slowly swinging open. A pair of shoes came into view, halting only for half a moment, before they moved in measured steps to approach him. Mael bared his teeth, a hostile flash of white in his charred face. The shoes didn’t care. They strode forward, filling the room with a dull clicking of hard heels against the floor. Leather, Mael noticed once they came to a halt in front of him. _Italian_ leather.

“Accidenti, Mael, stai di merda.”

 –Oh, for fuck’s sake!

 

“You frightened them.” Santino had sat down next to Mael once he had managed to heave the uncooperative ancient into an upright position. He truly looked hideous, the thing of nightmares. But Mael was old and Mael was strong. Already the wounds were closing and his skin regenerating under the crust of burned flesh. Santino’s nose was full of the familiar stench of char and roast. His stomach had turned the second he had stepped into the basement and found the mutilated body on the ground. Santino still avoided looking at him directly. There was no reason to look anyway. Mael didn’t answer him.

“They will be glad to hear I found you.” He continued calmly, fingers wrapped around the golden keepsake he carried with him, that lighter that had no true use for the medieval vampire. He caressed the edges, showing some manner of consideration in the way he kept from lighting a flame. The silence continued. Despite the heat that still radiated from Mael’s body, Santino could feel the wall of ice between them. There could not have been anyone the old Gaul would have wanted to see less than him, no doubt. Santino smiled thinly to himself.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” He turned his head to look at last. His voice, always soft, always restrained, was now becoming distant, almost forlorn. “To lose your faith, I mean. When I lost mine, it tore a hole into me that I have never truly managed to fill. I was maddened with the absence of it. Gold, jewelry, furs and art… None of it could satisfy me in my anger. I was starving for something I thought was lost forever. That feeling never quite leaves us who have lost so much.”

Mael grunted but there was no true telling if he was listening to a word Santino was saying. Santino wasn’t going to let that stop him. He continued: “I think it must have felt like relief to see something greater proven at last. When you saw the Veil, it was a straw to grasp. The magnitude of the world, the magic of it, was taken from you, and then this crack opened again and promised purpose, a deeper meaning. Who wouldn’t reach for it?” Santino was prepared to continue talking, to display what thoughts he might have to share until he finally hit the nerve. But when he opened his mouth to bring up another point, Mael stirred. Surprised, the former coven master paused and waited.

“Do you _ever_ shut up?”

Santino laughed and after a moment Mael joined him in it, despite great difficulties. His breath was a rattle, his words rasped under the weight of pain. His lips had cracked again, the blood that oozed from the wounds doing its best to seal them again. Santino watched this silent display of strength with great interest. These magnificent creatures, he thought, that could step into the sun and come back from it. He thought of Maharet and Eric, and of Maharet’s perfect child: Jessica. All of them wanted Mael back, wanted Mael safe. Santino’s heart was heavy with the sacrifice Mael had been willing to make for a God that didn’t exist.

“I couldn’t bear it, that is all. To live and know that the Christ, or the Lord or some great Spirit, exist. That they all had revealed themselves to us of all creatures, to that paramour of queens and vagabond prophet. To you and your Christian mind it must have made such sense… To mine it doesn’t. To mine, God is chaos. I wouldn’t suffer Him and live.” Mael’s voice was soft and hoarse, half existing only in Santino’s mind when his words forsook him. Santino sat in silence, broad back leaned against the wall, and patiently listened to Mael’s explanations. His heart filled itself with a pleasant bitterness, a melancholy that ached to be indulged.

“Why not you? Even if you didn’t see it, the knowledge that it exists is in you. By all rights, the moment you heard of it you should have flung yourself right into the fire.” Mael said and only the sudden wince from Santino made him realize the cruelty of his words. “You know how I mean it.” He added defensively.

“I told you, it’s lost.” Santino was playing with his lighter again, opening and closing the lid with a flick of his thumb. The shine of his nail caught the traces of light in the room. “Whether the Veil is real, which I doubt, or not doesn’t matter to me. Either way, it means nothing. God is in the heart or He is nowhere at all and He’s not in mine. No matter how I reach for that faith, no matter how I covet the idea of it, I can’t believe. Of course I can say this now, without having seen it, and perhaps the sight truly would drive me mad, but I have no desire to see it. I have no desire for the truth.”

“That sounds a lot like cowardice.”

“You’d know.”

Tension sizzled between the two vampires. A look of grim contemplation had caught them both, and they stared at the wandering shadows with unseeing eyes, each lost in their own web of thought and memory. Like a pair of statues, one broken down and withered, the other pristine and polished, they sat side by side and listened to the voices outside. The hours could have stretched like this, Mael and Santino together but alone, but they didn’t. Finally, it was Mael who picked up their conversation again, a softer quality to his words:

“Why have you come here?”

“To bring you home.”

“Bring me blood.”

Santino seemed to consider this but then consented with a small shake of his head. He was so dark, black-haired, black-eyed, and clad in his black fabrics, that he nearly melted into the darkness of the cellar room. But when he pushed up the sleeve of his shirt, the pallor of his skin was all the more striking for it. At once Mael’s eyes were trained to the new expanse of flesh, unmarred, unbroken. Santino could hear the sting of excitement that quickened Mael’s pulse.

Wordlessly, but with a sense of dignified officiality to it, Santino lifted his wrist to his companion’s burned lips, waiting there like an offering that only needed to be accepted. One prominent vein glistened palely beneath the barrier of skin, drawing Mael closer to the dark blood that slowly rolled through Santino’s body and fed him the strength he had needed to brave seven centuries. Santino was by no means an exceptionally strong vampire. The enigma of him lay elsewhere. He had been made well but his maker had not had any great power and even if he had drunken from ancient veins in his time, his blood was no match for Mael’s. Still he sought it, no matter his reservations. He didn’t have the mind to ponder any great implications of this, or the intimacy, the knowledge of each other, they would share thereafter. Santino offered him this gift of his blood, of himself, and he did it out of charity, a sense of compassion he had retained through the years no matter the cruelties he had dealt and endured. With a last shared glance, a silent agreement to never speak of it, Mael sank his fangs into Santino’s arm.

And then came the flood of blood. Santino’s body tensed in anticipation, a soundless gasp stuck in his throat, as a thankful groan rose from the depths of Mael’s chest. He drank deeply and without restraint, drawing the Italian closer to him in his merciless hunger. Santino felt the unmistakable frisson of pain and pleasure that accompanied the loss, the feeling blood running backwards in his veins. He felt the tug in his very heart, every swallow was a stutter in his pulse. A pale hand came to rest on Mael’s shoulder, nails digging into the scarring. Their bodies aligned, healthy and injured, constellating themselves around the red feast. Soon Santino felt a dizziness coming over him, making his eyelids flutter. The pull never stopped, draining him of any care to resist. How easy to sink against Mael, to drop into the waiting unconsciousness, to let the warmth of it embrace him and take him further down. But then, a sting of pain. Santino woke from his trance with a start and instantly tore his arm out of Mael’s white-knuckled grip. Both of them were gasping and panting for air they didn’t need, the scent of burnt hair mingling uncomfortably with the scent of blood.

“Let's just say you owe me one.”


End file.
